Compassion

One of my prayers for Emma is that she will develop godly traits and virtues as she grows. As a parent, it is so rewarding to see those develop in your child. One thing I have noticed for a long time in Emma, is her compassion toward others. She always wants to make sure everyone around her is taken care of. She will go up to her little friends in the nursery at church, and say "are you okay, honey?". I just love that!

Another form of Emma's compassion, is that she really empathizes with characters in movies. There was an incident over the summer where we were at a movie, and had to take a bawling Emma out of the theater in order for her to recover from a scene where an animated character was feeling lonely, and to top it off his cookie had broken.

That happened today, when Emma was watching Rudolph, and there was a tender scene involving a teddy bear. Emma turned around and looked at me with a stricken face, then tears poured out of her as she lay face-down on the floor, grieving for this bear. I rushed to her and held her in my lap, and had to stay with her through the end of the movie (which, thankfully, had a happy ending). Then, I had to re-wind the movie, as we watched - and re-watched the ending four or five times.

Here are pictures of Emma - still very fragile - as she watches the happy ending.